FPV – Riveted

Kevin’s Got a Brand New Drone

Laura Domela — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:11:20 +0000

After the Incident at Fury Cove, I convinced Kevin that he couldn't go the rest of our trip droneless, and he eventually caved and ordered the new DJI Inspire 1. We took it out for its maiden flight over at Meyers Chuck the other day.

As it takes off and raises into the air, its landing gear raises up and gets out of the way of the camera. Pretty sweet!

Taking off from the sea plane dock:

The camera can shoot 4K video and 12 megapixel stills and it's on a 3-axis gimbal. The camera and gimbal can be controlled by a second person with a separate controller. (Woohoo! That's me!)

We didn't try that fancy second person thing on the first flight.

Here's a little of our test footage:

Looks promising!

Day 9 – Quadcopter Down!

Kevin Morris — Tue, 26 May 2015 01:44:00 +0000

(Posted by Kevin)

The quadcopter (the one built with my own loving hands in August last year) had a very bad day at Fury Cove.

It was flying along like usual, about a quarter-mile from the boat, probably capturing some beautiful video – when it suddenly plummeted to the ground – flipping over and over – and crashed hard on the rocks below.

The crash site was on the other side of the island, so we had to take the kayak to look for it. We grabbed the tiny DVR that records the video feed from the ground and watched the last few seconds of the video. It showed us approximately where to look for the debris field.

Did we mention that the crash site was in a place where other boaters had sighted a grizzly with two cubs that same day? Well, yeah. That.

We knew he crash site was either in the water or on the rocks right by the water. The tide was coming in rapidly, so we knew we had to find it quickly or it would be covered by the incoming tide (if it wasn’t already). We grabbed bear spray, waterproof boots, life jackets, and set out in the kayak. Once ashore we started making plenty of loud noises. We hiked up and over the rocks and pretty quickly found the carnage – lots of small, broken drone bits scattered among the rocks. The ONLY piece that had landed in a tide pool was the GoPro camera (which can’t be flown in its waterproof case, unfortunately). It was a total loss.

Other boaters told us they had seen an eagle flying right in the same area at the time of the crash. There were many eagles around, so that theory made sense. Examining the wreckage, nothing looked wrong with the copter – motors and connections were as they should have been (except crash damage).

It’s hard to get the parts to re-build – especially while we’re exploring in the boat. We are looking at options to replace it so we can capture more video on this trip. We shall see. There are SO many things we still wanted to capture with aerial video…

Day 7 – Quadcopter Video of Pierre’s Echo Bay

Laura Domela — Sun, 24 May 2015 03:40:00 +0000

Kevin made another quadcopter video! Hope you like it, Pierre!

Flying Around Fossil Bay

Laura Domela — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:41:50 +0000

Kevin shot some aerial/quadcopter video of us in Fossil Bay over on Sucia Island the other day and made a short video.

The weather wasn't quite as beautiful as as it was for his previous Sucia Island quadcopter video, but this is a different view of the bay on a gray day and gives a good overall feel for where we were moored in the bay (and Ev Henry Point there on the right of this frame, where we hiked the other day):

Flying Around Watmough Bay

Laura Domela — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 14:22:17 +0000

Here's a short quadcopter video Kevin made yesterday while we were moored in Watmough Bay on Lopez Island:

Pretty spot, isn't it?

Patos Island Aerial Video

Laura Domela — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 13:40:01 +0000

Ta-da! Kevin's finished aerial video from around Patos Island (watch in HD if you can):

Shot with an FPV Quadcopter. Filmed with GoPro Hero 3+ aboard a Team Black Sheep Discovery Pro quadcopter. Launched from a Nordic Tug 34 anchored in Active Cove at Patos Island Marine State Park, WA.

The music is Isaac Albéniz: "Suite Española No. 1, Op. 47: Asturias" played by Ivan Kalcina.

More about the quadcopter here if you're interested.

More Around Patos Island

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 21:06:37 +0000

We took the quadcopter and hiked out to the lighthouse on Alden Point for some more fun aerial footage.

Oh hey seals!

In this photo, there's one seal looking straight up at the copter. You might have to click for an enlargement, but it's pretty cute.

Another cove-side campsite (Patos Island is a Washington State Park):

The remains of an old car or truck, beside the trail out to the lighthouse:

Kind of funny to have a car on a very small island where there are most definitely no roads.

Hey! The new mooring buoys match the boat's paint job:

Earlier today Kevin did his first from-the-boat launch and it went great! Can't wait to see the footage he got out here!

Taking off from Airship's top deck:

Smooth, successful top-deck landing:

Sunset looking out of the cove:

Sucia Island from the Quadcopter

Laura Domela — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 02:50:33 +0000

Kevin took his quadcopter up from a couple spots on Sucia Island yesterday morning. What a gorgeous place this is!

Birth of a New Drone

Kevin Morris — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:00:31 +0000

(Posted by Kevin)

My last drone was lost at sea in March. Apparently we didn’t do a blog post about it at the time, which is a mystery because it was exactly the kind of event we’d normally blog about. We were on the Oregon coast, and I’d been flying the drone over the beach and along the rocky shoreline all day. The GoPro HD camera was capturing the best-quality video I’d ever gotten from a drone – smooth, sharp, no vibration – and the gimbal was keeping the camera nicely level. I had spent a few weeks building and tuning it to get those excellent results. In First Person View (FPV) mode – it could go more than two miles away – with its long range control and video radio links.

On about the fifth flight of the day, I invited Laura out to watch on the “guest” video goggles. It’s like taking a ride on the drone. I was flying it along the beach, and cut out over the water for a bit – the drone was about 1800 feet away from us when the video suddenly went to static – with no warning. We tried various rescue techniques (just in case it was still out there hovering) including activating the “return to home” feature. We waited a few minutes… there was no sign of it “returning to home”.

We reviewed the video link recording (the lower-quality flight video, not the stabilized HD video), and stepped one frame at a time through the last few frames before we lost contact. Studying the telemetry, we figured out what (most likely) happened. One of the connectors where the battery power comes into the drone had apparently come loose and the whole thing fell out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean. We hiked along the beach at the spot closest to where it went down. There was no sign of it – and the current/waves were pretty extreme out there where it must have gone down.

Here’s the downlink video of the fatal, final flight:

I ordered all the parts to build a new one that week.

Now, five months later, all the parts have arrived and the new drone construction has begun. This one has numerous upgrades over the lost one – including a much more robust connection where the last one probably failed. Here are some photos of the construction process:

Almost ready to bolt the top on:

The new drone – a TBS Discovery Pro FPV Quadcopter – is now complete and has survived the first 16 test flights.

It has almost three hours of flight time logged, and seems to be even more stable than the last/lost one.

We plan to use this one to do more aerial videos and stills of our travels, and probably more fun projects like our “Chasing Ships” series:

New Drone!!

Laura Domela — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:17:01 +0000

Kevin finally got all of the parts from Team Black Sheep to build his new Discovery Pro FPV Gimbal Quadcopter. He hasn't flown since The Incident, (I can't believe Kevin didn't do a post about The Incident on Riveted, but this'll give you some background if you want, plus more technical stuff than you probably need…) and I was happy to see the box from Hong Kong arrive on the porch a few days ago. He's busy building now and it should't be long 'til he's got a new flying photo machine in the air again!

This is our kitchen table right now. (He probably doesn't need that salad bowl right there in his work space now, does he?)